Rudiments, p. 20.  This, in reality, differs but little from the old division into active, passive, and neuter.  In some grammars of recent date, as Churchill’s, R. W. Bailey’s, J. R. Brown’s, Butler’s, S. W. Clark’s, Frazee’s, Hart’s, Hendrick’s, Perley’s, Pinneo’s, Weld’s, Wells’s, Mulligan’s, and the improved treatises of Bullions and Frost, verbs are said to be of two kinds only, transitive and intransitive; but these authors allow to transitive verbs a “passive form,” or “passive voice,”—­absurdly making all passive verbs transitive, and all neuters intransitive, as if action were expressed by both.  For this most faulty classification, Dr. Bullions pretends the authority of “Mr. Webster;” and Frazee, that of “Webster, Bullions, and others.”—­Frazee’s Gram., Ster.  Ed., p. 30.  But if Dr. Webster ever taught the absurd doctrine that passive verbs are transitive, he has contradicted it far too much to have any weight in its favour.

OBS. 11.—­Dalton makes only two classes; and these he will have to be active and passive:  an arrangement for which he might have quoted Scaliger, Sanctius, and Scioppius.  Ash and Coar recognize but two, which they call active and neuter.  This was also the scheme of Bullions, in his Principles of E. Gram., 4th Edition, 1842.  Priestley and Maunder have two, which they call transitive and neuter; but Maunder, like some named above, will have transitive verbs to be susceptible of an active and a passive voice, and Priestley virtually asserts the same.  Cooper, Day, Davis, Hazen, Hiley, Webster, Wells, (in his 1st Edition,) and Wilcox. have three classes; transitive, intransitive, and passive.  Sanders’s Grammar has three; “Transitive, Intransitive, and Neuter;” and two voices, both transitive! Jaudon has four:  transitive, intransitive, auxiliary, and passive.  Burn has four; active, passive, neuter, and substantive.  Cardell labours hard to prove that all verbs are both active and transitive; and for this, had he desired their aid, he might have cited several ancient authorities.[227] Cutler avers, “All verbs are active;” yet he divides them “into active transitive, active intransitive, and participial verbs.”—­Grammar and Parser, p. 31.  Some grammarians, appearing to think all the foregoing modes of division useless, attempt nothing of the kind.  William Ward, in 1765, rejected all such classification, but recognized three voices; “Active, Passive, and Middle; as, I call, I am called, I am calling.”  Farnum, in 1842, acknowledged the first two of these voices, but made no division of verbs into classes.